Monster

Wuming ignored the man's taunts and kept attacking him, but without enough chakra, her attacks were only moderately powerful, and he easily deflected them one after another.

The man couldn't stand Wuming's humanlike expression. "Weapons should act like weapons, damn it!"

In an unnoticed corner, Qiancao's Sharingan was affecting the man. Gradually, only one voice remained in his mind, echoing again and again:

"Fight! This is great!"

The man felt his desire to fight rising, and a murderous rage began to swell inside him with nowhere to go.

Just as he was about to get serious, Shiri's voice rang out from nearby. "That's enough!"

Her voice startled Qiancao, who had been secretly using his Sharingan. He shut it off, pretending nothing had happened.

Seeing someone arrive, the man stopped and said with a smile, "This one seems a bit rebellious. I was just teaching her a lesson."

Shiri resisted the urge to look at Qiancao and addressed the man sternly. "The Senju Clan will be here soon. Lord Naoto wants you to take Wuming to him at once."

Then she raised her voice and snapped, "If you jeopardize the clan's battle plans, can you take responsibility?!"

The man clicked his tongue in protest, then glanced at Wuming. "Come on! Don't keep Lord Naoto waiting for his experiment!"

Wuming glanced at Qiancao, who was lying on the cell floor. Seeing the reassurance in his eyes, she finally relaxed a little.

But when she thought of how she was about to be used as a weapon to kill people, she wondered whether Qiancao, now that he knew what she really was, would fear her for having her hands stained with blood.

With mixed feelings, Wuming followed Shiri and the man out of the cell.

As they left, Qiancao activated his Sharingan again and fixed his gaze on the man's back. The three tomoe trembled slowly, as if they might change into a different pattern at any moment.

Qiancao still didn't know what his Sharingan could do, but instinctively, he felt that any enemy watched by his left eye would meet with misfortune.

Unfortunately, the man soon left the cell. With his target gone, Qiancao's Sharingan stopped trembling. A weariness that seemed to come from the depths of his soul washed over him, and he blacked out.

An hour later, in a valley somewhere in the Senju Territory, the charred bodies of Senju Clan members lay everywhere. Wuming stood among them, bent over and panting.

The few Senju Clan members still alive were badly injured. Lying on the ground, they cursed her one after another:

"Damn Uchiha!"

"You monster! You'll get what's coming to you!"

"How scary... I want to go home..."

Uchiha Naoto stood on a hill with Shiri and the man from the cell. In a somewhat puzzled tone, he asked Shiri, "Why does it feel like Wuming's ninjutsu is much stronger today? Did we implant the wrong techniques?"

Shiri answered respectfully, "It should be the effect of Uchiha Qiancao I mentioned."

Naoto was even more surprised. "It's only been half a day, and the effects are already this strong?"

Then he activated his Sharingan and observed Wuming's chakra flow below. It was no different from before, so the increase in her ninjutsu's power was probably due to her heightened ocular prowess.

"Go bring Wuming back, Keisuke," Naoto ordered calmly.

The man from the cell—Uchiha Keisuke—had a strange expression, as if an endless fury had been building inside him. The moment he heard Naoto's command, he leaped straight into the battlefield.

But instead of carrying out the order and bringing Wuming back, he charged at a Senju lying on the ground and punched him in the head.

The punch smashed the Senju's head to pieces, spraying red, white, and yellow across Keisuke's face.

Still not satisfied after killing one man, Keisuke leaped in front of another Senju and slashed his throat open with a kunai.

Naoto and Shiri were both astonished by Keisuke's sudden bloodlust. For a moment, their instincts as researchers got the better of them, and they didn't step in to stop him.

Soon, not a single Senju remained alive on the battlefield. Spattered with blood, Keisuke seemed unsatisfied. He fixed his sights on Wuming in the middle of the battlefield.

As Keisuke sprinted toward her, he formed hand seals.

"Fire Style: Great Fireball Technique!"

Wuming, her Sharingan activated, seemed to foresee Keisuke's ninjutsu. Before he had finished forming his hand seals, she began forming her own.

"Fire Style: Great Fire Annihilation!"

A sea of flames surged toward him, as if giving form to her fury, and swallowed Keisuke's Great Fireball.

Shiri, standing on the hill, was just about to go down and stop them when Naoto stretched out an arm to hold her back.

"Not yet. Let's gather some information first."

The flames unleashed by Great Fire Annihilation swallowed Keisuke's silhouette, but Wuming didn't let her guard down.

Keisuke had already leaped into the air. As he scattered a large number of shuriken, he formed hand seals.

"Fire Style: Phoenix Sage Flower Nail Crimson!"

Countless fist-sized fireballs, each wrapped around a shuriken, shot at Wuming from every direction. At the last possible moment, Wuming finished forming her hand seals.

"Fire Style: Great Fire Wall Technique!"

The flames she spat out quickly formed a blazing wall around her, wrapping around her like an eggshell. The flaming shuriken struck the wall with a crackling hiss.

The damaged shuriken fell to the ground, battered and misshapen, as if the wall's intense heat had melted them.

"Keisuke doesn't seem to be under mental control either," Naoto concluded. "Otherwise, his attacks wouldn't be so methodical."

Seeing that his ninjutsu had no effect on Wuming, Keisuke knew he had no chance of winning a war of attrition against her and her Yachihoko. It was pointless to unleash one technique after another if none could break through her defenses.

So he abandoned the idea of using more ninjutsu, drew the long sword strapped to his back, and circled around to approach Wuming.

Wuming had just fought more than ten Senju shinobi. Though her Yachihoko let her direct large amounts of chakra from a distance, it could do little to ease her physical and mental exhaustion.

If Keisuke got close and forced her into a taijutsu fight, the outcome would truly be uncertain.

But Wuming had long since grown tired of this world, full of conflict. Thinking of Qiancao lying in the cell, she felt anger well up inside her.

Facing Keisuke as he charged, Wuming stopped thinking and rushed to meet him, kunai in hand.

Though her physical condition and stamina were inferior to Keisuke's, her sheer ferocity kept her from falling behind. The two clashed back and forth.

Unfortunately, her exhaustion eventually left an opening. As she took Keisuke's kick head-on, she lost her footing, her legs stumbling as she lost her balance.

Seizing the rare opportunity, Keisuke gripped his sword with both hands and thrust it at Wuming.

But there wasn't a trace of retreat in Wuming's eyes. She had deliberately exposed the opening, intending to close the distance between them even if the sword struck her.

Yet the expected pain never came. Instead, her kunai struck Keisuke in the abdomen.

Without time to think, Wuming relied on her extensive combat experience. Acting on instinct, she twisted the kunai inside Keisuke's body, tearing open his wound.

A torrent of blood gushed out, staining half of Wuming's body in an instant and making a terrifying sight.

In that moment, Wuming saw why Keisuke hadn't continued his attack: Uchiha Naoto had intervened at some point, clamping the edge of Keisuke's sword between his hands.

It was only because Naoto had restrained Keisuke for that brief moment that she had managed to stab him.

Seeing Keisuke collapse with a grievous wound, Naoto seemed somewhat annoyed. He struck Wuming with a knife-hand blow, knocking her unconscious.

"Take Wuming back," he told Shiri as she hurried over, then quickly carried Keisuke away himself.